The Centre for Women’s and Gender Research, in collaboration with the Holberg Prize, will organise four reading seminars on Gayatry Spivak’s work this Spring. The first seminar will take place on 28th April.
The Holberg Prize recently named Indian scholar Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak as its 2025 Laureate. Spivak is University Professor in the Humanities at Columbia University and considered one of the most influential global intellectuals of our time. She receives the prize for her groundbreaking interdisciplinary research in comparative literature, translation, postcolonial studies, political philosophy, and feminist theory. Read more here: Literary Theorist Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak Named 2025 Holberg Prize Laureate.
This reading seminar is the first of four where we invite everyone, in particular students and employees, to read and discuss texts that Spivak herself has chosen for the reading list of her upcoming PhD master class. The texts provide a good cross-section of her latest research.
For this first reading seminar, we will read the following texts:
- Spivak, Gayatri C. 1999. Can the subaltern speak? Section from Chapter 3 “History” in Critique of postcolonial reason, starting with the line “At the other end of the spectrum…”. Harvard University Press, pp. 244-311.
- Spivak, Gayatri C. 2010. “In response”, in Can the subaltern speak? Reflections on the history of an idea, Rosalind C. Morris (ed.). Columbia University Press, pp. 227-236.
Those who would like to participate may contact Kamilla Stølen (kamilla.stolen@uib.no) to receive a copy of the text.
Each seminar will take place from 14:30 to 16:00 in SKOK’s meeting room, Parkveien 9 (Ida Bloms hus), on the following Mondays: 28th April, 5th May, 12th May and 19th May.